Tesla's Shanghai factory went into operation at the end of 2019 and saw its one-millionth mass-produced vehicle roll off the line in August 2022.
(Image credit: Tesla)
Tesla's (NASDAQ: TSLA) Shanghai factory saw the milestone of its 2 millionth vehicle roll off the assembly line today, less than four years after the plant went into operation.
The US electric vehicle (EV) maker announced the milestone today, saying it took 33 months for Giga Shanghai to achieve its first million vehicles and just 13 months for its second million.
Tesla's Shanghai factory, which began construction on January 7, 2019, and went into operation in late 2019, is the first wholly foreign-owned automotive manufacturing project in China.
Giga Shanghai began delivering Model 3 sedans in January 2020 and Model Y crossovers in January 2021 to local customers.
Giga Shanghai saw its one-millionth mass-produced vehicle roll off the assembly line on August 13, 2022, less than three years after the plant began production.
On July 13 of this year, Tesla's Shanghai plant saw the one millionth Model Y production vehicle roll off the line.
With an annual production capacity of more than 1 million vehicles, the factory is Tesla's largest in the world and not only supplies vehicles to customers in China, but also serves as an export hub for the EV maker.
Currently, Giga Shanghai sees a vehicle roll off the line in less than 40 seconds on average, Tesla said today.
Giga Shanghai is equipped with a 6,000-ton giant die-casting machine, which allows for the one-piece molding of the vehicle's rear underbody, thus making more than 70 parts into a single unit, Tesla said.
This not only streamlines the manufacturing process but also improves the strength and stability of the body, it added.
The factory is highly automated, with a 95 percent automation rate. Hundreds of robotic arms are at work here, allowing jobs that used to take hundreds or thousands of people to complete to be done by just a few dozen today, Tesla said.
A digital neural network covers the entire process of Giga Shanghai production, recording all the data from the manufacturing process to ensure the high quality of the vehicles, Tesla said.
The factory recycles 93 percent of its industrial waste and 98 percent of its industrial water, it said.
Giga Shanghai is able to recycle more than 400,000 tons of water per year, and the discharged wastewater can even be treated to raise fish, Tesla said.
More than 95 percent of the factory's vehicle parts come from local suppliers, and 99.9 percent of the factory's employees are Chinese, according to the EV maker.
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